


An Art Like Everything Else

by Zoodan21



Series: celestial [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Death as a concept, First Dates, Kravitz Backstory, M/M, One Shot, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, being an angel is hard and sometimes sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 07:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoodan21/pseuds/Zoodan21
Summary: Kravitz had tried in the beginning, he’d spent so much time trying to conform to how people saw death, how they wanted him to be. He’d twisted himself for each new person he met, hunted down and reaped. Time and time again until he didn’t know what he was. He’d grown beyond a dying bird but he was so far away from being something tangible.





	An Art Like Everything Else

**Author's Note:**

> so be warned there is a lot of talk about death in this, like A Lot, but i also don't go into the details about it, it's just mostly how Kravitz feels about it all but if you're not into that then this might not be for you 
> 
> title is from Sylvia Plath's poem Lady Lazarus which is so good and i really think you should go and read it!!!

Here’s the thing about being made from the dying thoughts from a bird; acting normal is  _ hard _ . 

There’s so many versions of it, changing overtime sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Kravitz had tried in the beginning, he’d spent so much time trying to conform to how people saw death, how they wanted him to be. He’d twisted himself for each new person he met, hunted down and reaped. Time and time again until he didn’t know what he was. He’d grown beyond a dying bird but he was so far away from being something tangible. 

The Raven Queen was no help either, she was a god, created for much more than Kravitz would ever be. She changed too, but it wasn’t a pain for her, she was fluid, not contained by anything. He couldn’t model himself after her, they weren’t made for the same purpose. Still, he let her fix his wings when he had them and preem like a proud chicken when he returned back home. 

(Liking a god to a chicken wasn’t recommend, but Kravitz had also seen her as a giant chicken with eyes for days and multiple teeth, so.)

In the end, he’d simply stopped. It took him a while to recognize that the thing in his reflection with multiple wings and eyes all over was him. Kravitz had come a long way from just having two wings and two eyes, stretched himself thin that he didn’t know what was his original state, and forcing himself to accept that how he looked had to do. 

Kravitz wasn’t a bird nor was he a man. He didn’t have to force himself to be like either of them, he was more than that. Besides, death happens to everyone, no matter what he looked like. Boredom and a streak of theatrical sense led him to creating the reaper look, a little less eyes and a little more naked bone. People were as scared of that as they were of a being with multiple eyes and wings, and Kravitz job was to hunt down people who tried to cheat death, he could make their last moments be in fear. 

He still kept track of how the living changed, the times that came and went, the waves of death that was bound to happen with each war and plague and famine. He spent a lot of his downtime with the birds, sitting by their nests and letting them steal feathers from his wings to make a soft bed. 

“Do not be afraid.” Was the first thing he said to a raven that had catiusly hopped closer to him one winter, leaving tracks in the snow from it’s tiny feet. Kravitz knew that winters weren’t fun, the black coat making them more susceptible to predators rather than letting them blending them, and no food coming by easy. So he let the bird get close and pick at his clothes and his wings, let it take whatever it wanted before it took off. 

Both him and the bird kept coming back to the same place, Kravitz sitting in the same place and the bird as curious and cautious as ever. He said the same thing every time they met and let it take however many feathers it wanted, even if it stung for a moment when it’s small beak plucked them. It came to an end eventually, like all things, and Kravitz had to leave for a long time and when he came back it was already summer, and there was no raven in sight. 

He never found out if it survived that winter or not. 

  
  
  
  
  


Kravitz wasn’t sure if he’d ever feared death when he was alive. Being afraid of dying was natural, instinctual, but death in itself? That wasn’t something he’d ever wondered over. He’d seen it of course, but there wasn’t any emotional connection to it. 

But humans were different. They were  _ so afraid _ of death. It was like they carried the fear of dying so close to their chest that it suffocated them. It wasn’t always the fear of themselves passing away, it could be anyone close to them that mattered enough. And when someone’s life was done it lead to  _ mourning.  _ Kravitz had never known that feeling. 

(He might have experienced something like it, the summer he came back to the tree. A pull in his stomach, hurt in his heart and the desire to squeeze all of his eyes shut and just not think of it because then it would be worse. But he wasn’t sure.) 

He’d never had the chance to care for anything before, something that he knew wasn’t permanent. Death was easy in that way, unchanging and reliable no matter what it looked like. 

When Kravitz had time he liked watching how the alive population cared for death though. The way they made it into something tangible, something worth choking on. He walked down the isle of beautiful buildings they rose to the sky to commemorate their dead, only for them to crumble and be forgotten when there was nobody left alive to care for them. Sometimes he’d sit on the bed in a poet's room late at night just to watch them write in a frenzy by the candlelight, to caught up in their own head to notice him. 

Occasionally, for fun and a bit of ego, Kravitz would let an artist see him without having to reap them the moment after. He’d show up eyes and wings and everything that made him  _ something else _ and he stayed and let them take him in, watch the awe and fear and wonder in their eyes. And he’d always say “Don’t be afraid.” 

  
  
  
  
  


Time passed oddly for him, Kravitz had never counted time in years, when he was a bird it was all about the season changes, now he counted it in how often things changed. It surprised him sometimes when he returned to a place he thought he’d left only a short while ago only to find the marble floors cracked and the paintings pale from sunlight. Artists he’d seen working day and night to capture the  _ essence  _ of death faded away from history, only showing up as a footnote at most. 

Time and death, for the living, Kravitz learned, meant erasure. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Taako was something else, Kravitz decided a moment after the elf had decided that the best way to deal with a reaper was with a tentacle spell. He’d decided that once before when he’d seen how many times the elf had died. And worse, he didn’t even remember dying and then coming back to life! Kravitz was a bit offended. 

He was also very okay with Kravitz being a reaper, like super chill about it. It had been a long time since Kravitz had met someone who made him look twice just based on their personality. Taako also fought with a red umbrella, which was in Kravitz humble opinion, very cool.

Kravitz also skillfully ignored the fact that Taako was flirting with him while he looked very much human and didn’t have wings. Kravitz wasn’t lying about his appearance, but he wasn’t sure what Taako would think if he broke out the eyes. It felt nice to have someone be interested in him beyond his work for the Raven Queen. It had been such a long time since it had happened, and it was something Kravitz hadn’t known he’d missed. 

So when Taako called him up, he agreed and spent about 10 minutes letting the Raven Queen groom his wings and make cooing noises over him. She’d done it once before, and in her haste to make him pretty almost plucked out half the feathers from one of his wings unintentionally. As he left her realm he could hear her laughter following him like the sound of twinkling stars. Kravitz wasn’t sure what he’d do without her.

The placeTaakoled him to wasn’t what he’d expected. He didn’t mind sitting in a dimly lit room drinking wine and doing pottery on the fake moon at a placed named Chug n Squeeze, it was just a bit unorthodox. But it was fully possible that it was super modern and Kravitz just wasn’t aware of it.

Kravitz hadn’t sat down in a long time and talked with anybody, let alone gone out with someone and boy did he feel it. He tried to relax and talk about something other than killing people, teasing Taako about wanting to make a ceramic bowl even if was a Vase night. 

“Yknow I’m not really one for metaphors and stuff but I’m gonna make one about this bowl alright?” Taako said, stopping the spinning plate under the bowl for a moment. 

“Okay? Taako you really don’t need to I-” He started to say but was cut off. 

“Sush sush I’m gonna tell you anyways. It’s like this alright; you got people here in the middle that are like, normal people that won’t change and everything is smooth rolling for them, easy to keep track off and easy to control.” Taako said and traced the edge of the bowl with one slender finger. “And then you’re gonna have people up here by the edge of it all, not willing to fall down in with the others.”

“Taako, thank you for telling me this but you don’t have to be on the edge of the cup either. You’re doing good work but you’ve also died so many times, ah, wouldn’t it be safer to slide down to the middle of everything? Why do you keep to the edge?” Kravitz hand twitched. It wasn’t the best question to ask and embarrassment welled up inside him, but he didn’t regret it. 

A weird little self deprecating smile graced Taako’s face, brows furrowed and eyes staring down his bowl between his clay covered hands, uneven and lumpy. “Because I’m worried no one else will have me.”

Something in Kravitz chest tightened and it was like his lungs had been opened and he’d dropped hot coal between them. It took him a moment, just long enough for Taako to smooth the exterior of the clay over one more time, to make sense of the feeling.It was followed by a slight panic.

He  _ cared _ about Taako. Cared about him so much it made his body ache and burn hot in a way it hadn’t done in a long time and it felt good.

It was a feeling he wanted to hold onto for as long as it was possible to. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 if you're into poetry i suggest reading Sylvia Plath and Karin Boye (who wrote in swedish but some of her poems are translated!) Also Robert Frost, but I personally like female poets much more!
> 
> My Tumblr is [Newspapernom](https://newspapernom.tumblr.com)


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